Animal studies

What is Lorenz’s procedure?

randomly divide goose eggs, half hatched with mother goose into nature, another half hatch in incubator where the first moving object they see is Lorenz

What did Lorenz find?

-incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere

-control group followed their mother

-when 2 groups are mixed up control continued to follow their mother, experimental group followed Lorenz

What is imprinting and how does that relate to the critical period?

Bird species that are mobile from birth attach to and follow the first moving object they see, in courtship they also court species the same as their imprinted mother figur e

This process needs to take place in a critical period of a few hours otherwise they don’t attach themselves to a mother figure

What is Harlow’s procedure?

16 baby monkeys get 2 wire models, their milk is either dispensed from a plain wire mother or a cloth covered mother

What are Harlow’s findings?

Baby monkeys cuddled the cloth covered mother in preference to the plain wire mother and sought comfort from the cloth mother when frightened regardless of which one dispensed milk

Contact comfort is more important than food when it comes to attachment

What did Harlow find about maternally deprived monkeys as adult?

Monkeys reared with plain wire mother were the most dysfunctional, monkeys reared with a cloth covered mother didn’t develop normal social behaviour

The deprived monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and bred less as were unskilled at mating

When becoming mothers, they attacked their own children

What did Harlow find about the critical period?

A mother has to be introduced to a monkey within 90 days after birth for an attachment to form, after that an attachment is impossible the damage done is irreversible

How do animal studies lack generalisability to humans?

Lorenz: mammalian attachment system is different and more complex than that of birds, in mammals attachment is a 2 way process so mammalian mothers also get attached to their young, so inappropriate to generalise to humans

Harlow: human brain and behavior more complex than that of monkeys

What is the real world value of Harlow’s research?

Help social workers and psychologists to understand that a lack of bonding may be a risk factor in child developing and allowing them to interfere to prevent poor outcomes

understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and breeding programmes in the wild